Transition from a network to a marketplace: a new chapter of your business

The digital world, and advertising in particular, never sleeps. Each and every day we hear about new products created and technologies implemented. The best single word to describe the digital world is competition. A trial of who’s the fastest, most innovative, most profitable, most client- or product-oriented, etc. That’s why companies search for the best practices to thrive in today’s exceedingly competitive market.

But have you noticed that digital advertising is becoming of a less high quality? It’s loaded with a lot of bots and malvertising, while the prices are getting only higher. Turn up the pressure, the presence of middlemen on the market impacts the costs even worse. It leads to advertisers’ budgets disintegration and development of fraudulent traffic.

The first business ground to meet those issues was a network. Despite the fact that, it was a revolutionary approach for businesses to meet their clients and build communication with them on the same spot – online; create company profiles and increase brand awareness; investigate and find target audiences, it came to the point where businesses and their audience started to lack a substantial interaction – financial.

Businesses not only didn’t have enough of real offers ending in successful transactions, but also had a ridiculously high price options – due to third parties. Middlemen earned much out of advertising campaign budgets, while publishers could likely be unaware of the initial price advertisers paid for a single click or impression. What’s more, the transparency of advertising started to slowly decrease, as advertisers had no other choice than to trust all the information they got from the middlemen.

It is notorious that the only way to take advantage in any business is to retain the audience and make money, no matter what changes or circumstances the market experiences. Considering the statements above a new business model was created – a marketplace.

A marketplace is an E-commerce ground which connects buyers and sellers. It offers much more opportunities than a network, as it connects audiences, but also makes them interact financially. So that trade really happens.

So, in other words, a marketplace is a network where transactions are of a heterogeneous character – are held between two or more sides. What’s more, a successful marketplace is where supply and demand rates are of the same level.

This means that a marketplace increases supply-chain transparency by removing or decreasing the impact of third party/middle-man.

So how does it impact your business…

Let’s examine it on Bitmedia’s example. Being a network, we won a lot of business connections and built communication with our audience. We received a strong presence in the digital world. Profiling helped increase our company’s awareness and visibility.

But it was just the first part of a customer journey for our clients. What each business needs is to make a potential client consider getting his service and after that, if the client’s decision is positive, to retain him. Here was the point where we understood we need to take actions. Now we are working on our transition from a network to a marketplace. It’s a long-term process that needs much effort and defined understanding.

We got loads of customer requests of whether we could improve the speed and quality of transactions. So the idea of a marketplace became our dearest solution. Now we have quality communication with our audience, enabling us to instantly make transactions with our clients. What’s more, as we stand for transparency, being a marketplace would help us to decrease middlemen power and prevent ad fraud being a bane for advertisers.

So what are the overall advantages that we will get from this transition?

Fast and easy communication, no need to get a third party involved between us and the client. A marketplace is a ground for convenient communication between a seller and a buyer, without a middleman involved.

Reduced advertising costs – due to reduced fees.

More transparency – clear information about costs spent on advertising.

Ad fraud control – no fraudful traffic. We have already gained results in combatting ad fraud.

Evaluation of parties into the system – choose reliable and rated market players.

Instant payments. No more waiting time or long money transfers.

Even more business contacts. Now all people are in just one place – from publishers to advertisers, blockchain-related to investors, influencers to journalists – saves everyones’ time and effort.